A glance at the week that was
Most read articles on irishtimes.com
1The pub loses its pulling power
2Has Dublin lost its groove?
3Swedish man dug from snow-covered car
4Why US firms are moving to Ireland
5Shhhhhh . . . it's Dublin's secret streets
6Two bodies found in Co Carlow
7The day the family car died
8Smith the outstanding big name candidate
9Smallest Irish mammal 'may vanish'
10Organisers of show apologise to Adele
Rankings calculated from last Saturday until yesterday morning
The numbers
250
Estimated number of homes in Dublin housing estate Belmayne
that fail to meet fire-safety standards.
2
Number of days Dominique Strauss-Kahn spent in custody for questioning about a French prostitution ring.
2
Number of speaking engagements Dominique Strauss-Kahn has booked for next month.
€1.2bn
Ulster Bank’s loss last year
1,980m
Depth at which the deepest-dwelling land animal, a type of springtail insect, has been discovered in a cave.
30,000
Years since the flower Silene stenophyllalast bloomed; Russian scientists resurrected it after finding its fruit in a fossilised squirrel burrow.
Using his car as in igloo
A Swedish man was trapped for two months in his snowed-in car. Peter Skyllberg, who is 44, had survived for 60 days after his car became submerged in snow near Umea, northern Sweden, on December 19th. He was found by hunters last weekend in an emaciated condition – doctors estimated he would have survived for just a few more days.
Mystery surrounds how exactly the car became covered, but it is thought that an “igloo effect” insulated the car from the worst of the subzero conditions – temperatures plummeted to -30 degrees during January – and Skyllberg’s body temperature fell to a level at which he barely used any calories, while staying warm enough to live.
Next week you need to know about . . . the BP Deepwater Horizon trial
A trial to determine damages and fines related to the most severe environmental catastrophe in decades is due to begin on Monday, even though the oil company BP and other parties have been pushing for a pretrial settlement.
On April 21st, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers. The tragedy didn’t end there, however; five million barrels of crude oil gushed out of the damaged well, and the ensuing oil slick spread over 180,000sq km, causing huge environmental damage in the Atlantic and along the southern US coast. The damage to sea life and the Louisiana wetlands was incalculable.
Calculating that damage, however, is exactly what this trial will seek to do. Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans is hearing most of the outstanding civil claims related to the disaster – there are 120,000 civil plaintiffs – and will try to determine how much BP, rig-owner Transocean and other companies involved in the disaster should be fined under the US Clean Water Act.
BP won a significant pretrial victory when Judge Barbier ruled that evidence of previous accidents was inadmissable because it would take too long to process the evidence. BP set up a $20 billion compensation fund after the incident. The company has consistently denied gross negligence. - Davin O’Dwyer
We now know
Dictators are not welcome at the Academy Awards, after Sacha Baron Cohen was told not to turn up to tomorrow night's ceremony dressed as the title character from his latest mockumentary, The Dictator.
Sarah Palin believed that Queen Elizabeth II was in charge of British forces in Iraq, according to an aide on the 2008 presidential campaign.
Adele’s acceptance speech for her album of the year prize at the end of the Brit Awards was cut short to make way for a performance by Blur, prompting an exasperated response from the singer.
Give me a crash course in . . . the consumer price index
What have champagne and quick soup got in common?They're both delicious, obviously. But that's not all. This week the Central Statistics Office decided that neither belongs in the basket of goods it prices each month in order to establish the consumer price index, which it then uses to work out inflation figures.
What has the CSO got against champagne? Or quick soup?It's not just the glass of bubbly and the hug in a mug that have fallen foul of the statisticians. The CSO has also decided that tinned spaghetti, the classic court shoe, boarding school fees, solid concrete blocks, ladies' slippers (but not men's – phew), plastic basins, CD singles, cauliflower, collars of bacon, lamb pieces and DVD players are all no longer sufficiently popular when it comes to establishing the average Irish consumer's spending habits.
How on earth has the CSO worked out that we are no longer buying these products?It's very clever and very thorough. Each month nearly 100 part-time price-checkers from the CSO visit shops all over the State and take note of prices of more than 600 products and services. Some things have been thrown out of the basket this week because these price-checkers say they can't find them in shops in significant quantities any more.
The CSO also quizzes retailers about what sells, and its crack team of number crunchers read the papers to work out what’s hot and what’s not.
Every five years it updates its list. Now is its time.
There's a what's-hot list too?Of course: the CSO is not just discarding items but also adding new ones. Gluten-free foods are big now, as are iPads. Memory sticks are in, while music downloads and internet-
connected televisions can be found in the basket along with smoothies, cycling helmets and mineral waters.
Does the CSO think we have all moved to California?Possibly, although not all the new items are high-tech. Also included are mixer taps, garden shrubs, pregnancy kits and cold and flu drinks.
What else has it done?The relative important of the goods and services in the CSO's typical basket are worked out by questioning consumers about their spending habits in a quarterly household budget survey, and various categories get a weighting. The CSO has also changed its weighting system to reflect the proportion of income spent in certain areas. Cars, package holidays and white goods now make up less of our average spend, while petrol and diesel, health insurance, rent and electricity have had their weighting increased, as they now make up a bigger percentage of consumer spending.
Is that all?Nearly. The CSO also admitted this week that when it comes to our consumption of cigarettes and alcohol we lie to researchers and pretend we're drinking and smoking a lot less than is actually the case. To get at the truth the CSO has decided that it will ignore our answers and instead rely on straight-as-a-die Revenue officials for information about how much we drink and smoke. - Conor Pope
World's top 25 student cities: Dublin comes joint 8th
TOP 10 BREAKDOWN
1 Paris, France Overall score 421
Universities’ academic rankings score 95, student-mix score 85, quality of living score 91, employer-activity score 96, affordability score 54
2 London, England Overall score 405
Academic rankings 100, student mix 87, quality of living 88, employer activity 89, affordability 41
3 Boston, US Overall score 399
Academic rankings 98, student mix 85, quality of living 89, employer activity 83, affordability 44
4 Melbourne, Australia Overall score 398
Academic rankings 91, student mix 100, quality of living 95, employer activity 84, affordability 29
5 Vienna, Austria Overall score 389
Academic rankings 47, student mix 99, quality of living 99.5, employer activity 81, affordability 62
6 Sydney, Australia Overall score 398
Academic rankings 91, student mix 100, quality of living 94.5, employer activity 84, affordability 28
7 Zurich, Switzerland Overall score 381
Academic rankings 66, student mix 84, quality of living 99, employer activity 81, affordability 51
= 8 Berlin, Germany Overall score 376
Academic rankings 72, student mix 81, quality of living 95, employer activity 57, affordability 71
= 8 Dublin Overall score 376
Academic rankings 79, student mix 92, quality of living 91.5, employer activity 70, affordability 43
10 Montreal, Canada Overall score 372
Academic rankings 80, student mix 85, quality of living 93, employer activity 68, affordability 46
Data collated by the All-Island Research Observatory (airo.ie), from the QS Top University rankings.
